@Cowthulu@mastodon.social avatar

Cowthulu

@Cowthulu@mastodon.social

As well as writing fiction, Arlen Feldman is a software engineer, entrepreneur, maker, costumer, con runner (cosinecon.org) and computer book author. His website is cowthulu.com

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Cowthulu, to random
@Cowthulu@mastodon.social avatar

@dgar These figures all have different names. Turns out there’s a whole gnomenclature.

khalidabuhakmeh, to dotnet
@khalidabuhakmeh@mastodon.social avatar

I don’t know if it’s just my memory playing tricks on me, but #dotnet looks more noisy every time I look at it.

It's harder to visually parse the flow of a codebase.

Cowthulu,
@Cowthulu@mastodon.social avatar

@khalidabuhakmeh I agree. In the early days, the cleanness of #dotnet & #csharp was one of its big selling points.

Now a lot of things have been added that might be nice in some situations, but definitely make it harder to read.

pluralistic, to random
@pluralistic@mamot.fr avatar

This is huge: yesterday, the FTC finalized a rule banning noncompete agreements for every American worker. That means that the person working the register at a Wendy's can switch to the fry-trap at McD's for an extra $0.25/hour, without their boss suing them:

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/04/ftc-announces-rule-banning-noncompetes

--

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/25/capri-v-tapestry/#aiming-at-dollars-not-men

1/

Cowthulu,
@Cowthulu@mastodon.social avatar

@pluralistic It is not just the apples-to-apples limitation in non-competes, but how widely they are written.

Years ago, I was asked to sign a non-compete as a software engineer. The language was so broad that I technically couldn’t have gone to work at McD’s because they used cash registers, which were computers, so obviously competing!

Fortunately, I was in a position to decline signing, although the CEO accused me of being disloyal.

#Pluralistic

Cowthulu, to random
@Cowthulu@mastodon.social avatar

Saw this sign on our travels and did our best to follow directions...

Cowthulu, to mst3k
@Cowthulu@mastodon.social avatar

Don’t know if there is much interest in costuming on Mastodon yet, but these are our costumes from the recent Costume Con 42. Tom Servo and Pearl Forrester from .

Tom Servo was over 9 feet tall, and I was using a camera and virtual glasses to see where I was going.

JenMsft, to random
@JenMsft@mastodon.social avatar

One might say those days were pure bliss

Cowthulu,
@Cowthulu@mastodon.social avatar

@JenMsft I always thought it looked a lot like the Tellytubby hill, so my version was slightly modified…

Cowthulu,
@Cowthulu@mastodon.social avatar

@JenMsft i actually did a whole series of them. This one I put on a friend’s machine, and wrote a program so that , very very slowly, the Tellytubby got closer.

khalidabuhakmeh, to random
@khalidabuhakmeh@mastodon.social avatar

Some days you want to write a blog post, you get 90% “there” with the demo, but there’s a bit too many hurdles that you need to help fix those first. DAAAAAAAMN!

Cowthulu,
@Cowthulu@mastodon.social avatar

@khalidabuhakmeh I’ve noticed that when I write a demo for a blog post, I end up with much cleaner code and deal with a bunch of edge cases I’d normally ignore so that I don’t get laughed at by other (mythical readers of my blog) programmers!

anderseknert, to random
@anderseknert@hachyderm.io avatar

What things that are illegal where you are would you do if they were legal?

Cowthulu,
@Cowthulu@mastodon.social avatar

@anderseknert Make backups of my digital purchases (and make tools to make the backups).

khalidabuhakmeh, to dotnet
@khalidabuhakmeh@mastodon.social avatar

👋 #dotnet folks, when was the last time you used an event handler in your codebase?

Think “timer.Interval+= DoStuff”.

Cowthulu,
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@khalidabuhakmeh all the time in WinForms and WPF code, but generally avoid events for non-UI stuff for coupling/lifetime issues.

Jeremiah, to random
@Jeremiah@alpaca.gold avatar

OH: “People on my team are fans of Harry Potter, so we named our API services after characters in the books.”

Please do not do this. It’s not as amusing to your coworkers as you think. It does not help your coworkers intuit what your services do. Names are a UI. Be accessible.

And in the case of Harry Potter, the references also do not age well. 🏳️‍⚧️

#APIDays #APIDaysHelsinki

Cowthulu,
@Cowthulu@mastodon.social avatar

@Jeremiah @anderseknert We used to have servers named for characters from Babylon 5. Security was great, because nobody could remember how to spell them!

shanselman, to random
@shanselman@hachyderm.io avatar

Everyone needs a Zune in 2023. I bring my own Zunes back to life just in time for @MarvelStudios' #GotGVol3, only in theaters May 5. https://youtu.be/RLYhvJG30iE

Cowthulu,
@Cowthulu@mastodon.social avatar

@shanselman In my book on WPF many years ago, I was describing how theming worked and why, for example, it didn’t support the Zune theme—but that, so far, neither of the Zune owners had complained.

(My Microsoft reviewer was unamused).

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